Holy Smokes – Look at It Go

So, the deal here is that we are looking back on a whole decade in this issue of Food & Spirits Magazine. I would have thought Erik (El Jefe) would have changed the name of this publication to Grub & Ghosts Quarterly by now, but there is always hope in my heart.

When thinking about the last ten years, what has changed, what has gotten better or worse, or what nuggets of knowledge I can share, my initial thought is, “Boy, this article sure is going to be hard to write. Doesn’t Erik know that I still have to finish Horizon Zero Dawn and pessimistically sulk?” He does know. He just doesn’t care. Guess what? If you don’t care about yourself nobody else is going to care for you. Nobody really cares what you’re doing, but the people that matter do want you to be happy. So, do what makes you happy and pays your bills, and try to tell everyone that you’re happy because then they don’t have to worry about you. Your mom worries – so give her a break.

Well, I better get to the meat of this thing. If you don’t know, I own B & G Tasty Foods. It is a restaurant and we do serve food, so it’s okay that I write for this magazine. I don’t do anything special besides B & G. It is the only thing I am qualified to write about, so that’s what you’re going to get. Let’s take a look together at the major changes B & G has gone through in the last tenth of a century.

Eric has a proper mullet now. Eric is our cook and he has kind of always had a mullet, but now it is really going strong. He keeps it tucked in pretty hard at work and dresses pretty normal when he is cooking, but you should see him outside of work. That hair flows. One time, a scary man with face tattoos called him “Cool Breeze.” He has really started to wear a lot of tank tops, too, I think. Or jerseys. Or both. Maybe. It’s like how your cat gets old but you don’t notice it because you see her every day. He wears something where you get to see a large amount of his arms and it seems to work for him. He is still alive and people mostly like him, so it must be working. B & G Tasty Foods is better for having Eric. Customers don’t get to talk to him usually, unless you catch him when he is filling up his water cup. If that happens, he’ll probably try to help you, but it’ll just be awkward for both of you. I give Eric’s bodily changes this decade a B+.

Next up, is our partnership with Film Streams Theater. It is super funny. Over there at the theater, they have this awesome program for high school kids where they get to leave school and come watch a movie and have a discussion about it. These are mostly educational films, but come on, what movie is so bad that the kids would rather stay at school? I get to work with people named Dené, Dana, and Patrick and other people, too, and they are the nicest people I have ever met. They work super hard and are really passionate about what they do and I wonder if they are all on some kind of uppers. It is great.

Where does B & G come in? You don’t see how we could possibly fit into this situation? Well, the kids have to eat, you know. You are a monster. So, loose meat for the kids in the dark theater then, right? Ha-ha, what a terrible idea. You aren’t good at this at all. That would be a huge mess and everyone would hate it.

We make up turkey sandwiches with carrots and hummus and chips. We don’t even have that stuff in our restaurant. I told you it was super funny. The lunches are okay. I’m going to try to spice them up a bit this year. Maybe I’ll trick a bakery into donating cookies or something. I want the kids to be happy, but getting an entire lunch together for a couple of bucks doesn’t get you very far. These kids are lucky, but they are also in kind of a limbo existence that isn’t quite prison, but isn’t really freedom either. We do give them napkins. I did almost have a heart attack trying to sort out the logistics of making this work for the first showing. We’ve got it sorted out now. So kids are treated as subhuman but we all try hard. My rating for our relationship with Film Streams? A+

Alright, the change I have been dreading discussing, the Hulk Hogan poster in the kitchen. At first there was no Hulk poster. They do not naturally occur. Things were tough the first few years of ownership. I had to do some serious thinking and at the time, putting up the Hulk poster was the right thing to do. It worked for a long time. Things got better. Recently though, with Mr. Hogan’s new show, ‘Hogan Knows Best’, he has really turned out to be a nasty dude. Back when he was wrestling the Sheik or whatever that guy was, or Sergeant Slaughter, he was someone to look up to. He was all the best things about America. Well, as it turns out, America was fooled. He isn’t everything that is great. He probably isn’t anything that is great. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. There I said it. The Hulk poster had to come down. It was getting pretty greasy, too. The B & G/Hulk Hogan partnership = F+

Now that that is over, I want to discuss my favorite change at B & G Tasty Foods from the past decade. His name is Richard. Richard works for Cintas, the laundry and uniform service. For a long time, we had this kid named Mark and while he was good, his heart wasn’t in it. We got our rags and mop heads, but you could just tell Mark was ready to move on. He would make mistakes. Mark ended up leaving Cintas to start his own clothing line or something. It was crazy! He was like 19 years old or something. He told me his plans, and I told him that he was going to die. But he left and I never saw him again.

So, I’m left wondering who will be our next rag/mop head/apron delivery dude when in comes Richard. I never knew we could have it so good. We even get our toilet paper from Richard now. He never makes a mistake. He answers calls from me on his personal phone on Sunday nights. He gets me everything I ask for and more. So you get it, he does his job well. You don’t even know the half of it. He always comes in with a stellar attitude and just raises the whole vibe. He always has some awesome story about his trip to Jamaica or about his kids growing up, or about how he accidentally became a golf enthusiast.

I don’t want you to think I am being silly here – talking about how this lowly service technician is going above and beyond his station. It isn’t like that. Richard was a Marine! He has an awesome family that loves him! He can do anything and he will be good at it. He is better than me and quite frankly, probably better than you. Plus, I think he is way older than me, but he looks ten years younger. I think Richard might be one of those people that is just a higher caliber person than regular people. I think I might hate him if I didn’t enjoy his company and service so much. My advice to any business trying to make it – get Richard. Having Richard is the biggest and best change that has happened at B & G Tasty Foods this decade. A+

Well, there you go. Sure, there have been other changes in the last ten years. We have a new point-of sale-system, employees have come and gone, new menu items, discontinued items, and a dining room expansion. We even got an employee bicycle shed! There are just too many to list and it would be boring, and I would be sad writing it. And as the saying goes, “If you get sad thinking about your restaurant’s history, stop writing the article.”

Eddie Morin

I’m Eddie Morin. I’m from Omaha. I run B & G Tasty Foods, and I like eating food, playing video games and dinking around with my wife and kids. I used to not be so fat. That’s all I really think there is to me.